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I couldn’t handle his feelings right now, I was too busy dealing with my own. “Your family is…big.”

“They are. And loud.”

“I’m sure that’s just a result of the sheer number of them.”

“That doesn’t help.” He lowered his brows, a look of concern taking over his face. “You okay?”

No! Not at all. My mother left us when I was only ten and somehow I’ve become the bad guy in this scenario. For some reason my dad refuses to have an opinion and my sister expects me to play nice. We’re supposed to be a united front against her. She chose her life. She can’t have it both ways.What would Mr.Big Happy Family think of that speech? “Fine. Just hot” is what I really said.

“Did you see that stupid comment on Bean’s post?”

“Yes, I deleted it.”

Asher opened his mouth and shut it again. “I didn’t know you could do that.”

“You didn’t know comments could be deleted?”

“I didn’t know you held that kind of power,” he said.

I laughed, which felt nice. “I’m pretty high up at the shelter.”

“Speaking of Bean, I thought of a social media idea that might generate some buzz.”

“Generate buzz?” I said with a smile. “You sound like a marketing professional or something.”

“Well, itiswhat I want to do.”

“You want to be a marketing professional?” I was dying to see his social media now. It was probably so good. Too bad he thought I already knew or I’d ask what his online handle was.

“I know, so aspirational,” he said. “What does your son want to be when he grows up? A doctor? A pilot? No, better. He wants to go into marketing.”

“Nothing wrong with marketing. It seems everyone needs that these days. And knowing what you want is huge.” It was more than I knew about my future at the moment.

“Idoknow what I want,” he said in a lowered voice.

My heart seemed to stutter at the comment. I ignored it. “Maybe you should take over the shelter’s Instagram.”

“I have some ideas, but I’m not going to take that power away from you. I don’t have the guts to delete mean comments without a second thought. I’d probably spend my time responding, trying to change their mind, or giving other commenters the chance to refute it.”

“How do you know I didn’t have a second thought?” I asked.

“Did you?”

I shook my head.

“That’s what I thought.”

“Because I’m mean,” I said.

“What? No. I said the comment was mean, not you.”

I waved my hand through the air. “I know. Just a joke.”

Asher seemed to sense it hadn’t been. “Confident and mean aren’t the same thing, Wren.”

“You think I’m confident?”

His hazel eyes met mine. “You are.”